Who really is the Paracletos?

Sadly, Shabir Ally's argument in this pamphlet depends on some dishonest moves,
interpreting statements in misleading ways to arrive at his desired results.
Let us examine his quotations and supposed conclusions.

Shabir Ally:
To really find out we first have to know what Paracletos means.
Some have translated it Comforter, Counselor, or even Advocate.
But each of these translations is inadequate and inaccurate.

Response:

Who says "inaccurate"? All translation is approximate as Muslims are
never tired of emphasizing in regard to the translations of the
Qur'an. No, each of these translations are proper and good translations,
which were done by responsible and able translators. Nearly every
time one translates from one language to another, there are several
terms one could chose to render a word of the source language in
the target language. Unless Shabir Ally has no experience in
translating because he is strictly monolingual and knows no language
at all beside English, there is hardly an excuse for such an
uninformed opinion. In fact, we assume that Ally knows at least
rudiments of Arabic and the purpose of his derogatory remark
about those translations is not based on scholarly evaluation
of the Greek, but it was made solely in order to emotionally prepare
(manipulate) the reader to accept the substitute. Shabir Ally who
himself is certainly no scholar of the Greek language, goes on to
propose his own translation, constructed on the basis of cut and
paste quotations ripped out of context and reassembled in a way
none of the quoted authors would agree with.

Shabir Ally:
This is why noted Biblical scholars such as Raymond Brown
prefer to simply keep the word Paracletos untranslated.
They use an anglicized version: Paraclete.

Response:

It is true that Raymond Brown leaves the word untranslated
in his rendition of the Biblical text. However, it is NOT true
that he calls translating the word as "Comforter", "Counselor",
or "Advocate" inaccurate. He confirms the validity of those
translations, but states that the range of meaning is broader
than any of those words can represent and therefore leaves it
as Paraclete after having explained the meaning. However,
"Prophet" is not among the possible translations suggested by
Brown. I am sure Shabir Ally would have told us, if it were so.
We tell you that it is not so. On whose authority among those
many "noted Biblical scholars" is Shabir Ally going to base
his own suggestion that parakletos means prophet? He will not
find one. If Shabir Ally has indeed consulted several noted
Biblical scholars as he seems to claim in his statement, and
sought to understand their commentary on the term parakletos,
why does he then go on to contradict all of them by choosing
a translation not supported by any of them? What is his motivation?
Is it honest scholarship?

Shabir Ally:
So Jesus according to this usage said that another Paraclete
will come after Jesus goes away. But what does Paraclete mean?
According to Harper's Bible Dictionary, 1985 edition, the word
paraclete means "one called to the side of" (p.749).
The same dictionary tells us that the Hebrew word for prophet
(nabi) means "one who calls" or "one who is called" (p. 826).

Response:

So far correct, and indeed, "one called to the side of" another
person for help and support is well translated as comforter,
counselor, or advocate. Also, with the meaning of nabi given
in the Bible dictionary we have no quarrels and assume that Ally
quoted correctly. Indeed, a prophet is one called (by God) to
deliver a message to the people and in this task he is one who
calls the people to listen to God. The dictionary is not the
problem, but watch how Ally continues.

This seems to mean that a nabi is a paraclete. Hence when Jesus
spoke of another paraclete to come after him he spoke of another
prophet to come.

Response:

Ally makes this connection solely on the basis that for both words
he found a descriptive translation containing the word "called".
He ignores, however, that the meaning of the two words is quite
different.
God is the king who makes the law as well as the judge who decides
on our case. The Prophet is the spokesman, the mouthpiece of God.
He announces the will of God to us, calling us to obey, and he
informs us of the judgment when we disobey. The Prophet sides
with God, and given the all too common human disobedience he often
has to be the accuser. The Prophet is regularly in opposition to
the people.

The image behind the term parakletos, on the other hand, is
different. The Paraklete is on our side. He is the defense attorney.
He is there to comfort us when we are in distress, he counsels us
in difficult situations and is the advocate who defends our case.
He is the one called to OUR side. The Prophet is called to God's
side to speak for Him to the people. How could Shabir Ally overlook
this in his study of commentaries by noted Bible scholars? Or has
he deliberately chosen to overlook this distinction as it is
not helping his case?

There is, however, another observation worth making, because Jesus
indeed speaks of prophets who will come.

Jesus answered, "Watch out that no-one deceives you. For many
will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Christ', and deceive
many. ... and many false prophets will appear and deceive many
people. Matthew 24:4,5,10

I doubt Shabir Ally wants to apply this passage to Muhammad,
and we will resist elaborating on it. However, it is clear that
Jesus did not lack words to announce a true future prophet had he
intended to do so. He used the correct word for prophet
(prophetes) many times.
We invite all Muslim readers to ponder together with Shabir Ally
the question: Why has Jesus chosen to speak about another PARAKLETE
and NOT about another PROPHET in the passage under consideration?

Seemingly Shabir Ally regularly commits the fallacy of concluding
that if two entities share some similarity, then they are equal.
(See also the very helpful article on the difference between
similarity and sameness, called Words
have meaning.) This is really a beginner's mistake, but we will
see it again below. Let me illustrate the fallacious nature of this
with an example taken from Middle Eastern bazaars. A prophet is "one
who calls," and a bazaar merchant is "one who calls" (calls out to
people to pay attention to his message ... that his merchendise is
better or cheaper than those of others). Therefore, according to
Ally's argumentative structure, every merchant is a prophet. It
should be obvious to everyone how silly such a conclusion is.

After the basis for Shabir Ally's argument has been shown faulty,
the rest could just be discarded since conclusions based on false
assuptions are invalid anyway. Nevertheless, let us comment further
since more can be learned from this, in particular, which mistakes
to avoid.

This makes sense since Jesus was also a prophet according to
the Bible.

Response:

It is true that Jesus also spoke prophetically, but he was much more
than a only prophet, something Muslim propagandists love to ignore.
This issue is discussed carefully in the sections Who
is Jesus? and What does it mean that
Jesus is called "The Messiah"? And the same "much more" holds
for the Paraklete as well. Therefore it is proper that Jesus calls
him "another paraclete" (similar to himself). Jesus is putting himself
and the Paraklete on the same level. While Muslims often try to conclude
from this that the Paraclete therefore needs to be another human prophet
despite everything that is said about the Paraclete which identifies
him as the divine Holy Spirit, it is in fact another confirmation that
Jesus' understanding of himself is deity, far above any merely human
prophet (as we will see below, Jesus speaks of the eternality and
omnipresence of the Paraclete which are divine attributes).

Shabir Ally:
This finding is further supported by these facts:

1. The Old Testament scholar Bernhard Anderson in his book
Understanding the Old Testament says that it is uncertain
whether the word nabi means "one who calls" or "one
who is called." But he does say that the word means
a prophet. And he tells us: "The prophet is an intermediary,
a spokesperson--one who acts and speaks on behalf of Another"
(fourth edition, p. 248). We conclude that a prophet is a
spokesperson for God.

Response:

No complaint about this. This paragraph does, however, NOT support
any of Shabir Ally's claims about the Paraclete. It only speaks
about the Old Testament understanding of the role of a prophet.

Shabir Ally:
2. Raymond Brown in his monumental 2-volume commentary on
John's Gospel admits that Paraclete can mean "an
intercessor, a mediator, a spokesman" (volume 2, p. 1136).
We conclude that a Paraclete is a spokesman for God.

Response:

If you have no real argument, appeal to the sinister motives
of the opponent. There is nothing to admit, since there was
no effort to hide anything. Sadly, many Muslim speakers
operate largely on the level of cheap propaganda by creating
strong negative emotions as this makes it so much easier
to sell a bad argument. The approach is to set the attitude
that Christians are in general dishonest and try to hide
the truth about their faith, but here we found one honest
scholar among them who admits to what Muslims knew
all along (many examples of this method by various Muslim
speakers and authors could be given).

Furthermore, Shabir Ally prepares the stage to repeat the
mistake of concluding two terms are same (A is B) if he can find
one description which they share. Earlier it was the word "called",
now it is the word "spokesman" which is enough for him to
proceed with the identification. In addition, he confuses
dictionary meanings giving the range of possibility in meaning
with the specific meaning of a word in its context. In this
case he transforms "can mean" (a list of things) into "is" (just
one item of this list) without any reason given. Why does he pick
"spokesman" (the last item on the list of possible meanings)
and not "intercessor" which is the first? Using Shabir Ally's
way of arguing, we could conclude that "a Paraclete is an
intercessor". Ally thought he even could add "for God", so
we could conclude with equal justification that "a Paraclete
is an intercessor for God", even though God certainly does not
need anyone to intercede for him. Again, Shabir Ally's logic
is atrocious, and since he is quite intelligent, we can't
excuse his misleading quotations and conclusions from them
as innocent mistakes of an ignorant fool. If we may assume
that Shabir Ally read those commentaries and dictionaries he
quotes from - at least a full page around the quotations he
appeals to in his articles - in order to be sure of their
meaning, then he knows that these scholars have reached
conclusions in their commentaries that contradict his own.
Failing to alert his readers to this fact can hardly be called
honest scholarship. On the contrary, he purposely tries to make
his readers believe something that has no support from any
scholars, in particularly not from those whose names he mentions
in his article to lend it credibility.

Let us observe the next moves in Ally's word game.

3. The Bible in Living English translated by Stephen T. Byington
translates the word Paraclete as "spokesman." We conclude
that Jesus was speaking of another Paraclete/Spokesman/Prophet
to come after him.

Response:

Note that he too does not translate "spokesman for God" as Ally
had it sneaked in at the end of his last sentence. We have already
mentioned that the meaning of paraclete is one called to our side,
an advocate for us. But even if we were to accept the
expression "spokesman for God" we would not get the desired
conclusion that this must be a human being. Angels are
spokemen for God too as they deliver His messages, and so does
the Holy Spirit. This does not make him any less divine. If God
himself comes to you to speak his message, does that mean he can
no longer be God, because he is the one who spoke it?

Furthermore, though Shabir Ally seems to have searched even the
most obscure translations to find some expressions that might
support his contrived argument in any way, he has not found even
one that would give him the desired term "Prophet". Despite this -
readers beware -, we find "prophet" appear in his conclusion. Yet
again, the quotations do not actually support his claims; his
conclusions are not valid.

Shabir Ally:
What about the fact that John 14:26 calls the Paraclete "the
Holy Spirit"? As Raymond Brown points out, some Biblical
scholars think the passage originally just said "the Spirit."
They say that "Holy" would have been added later on. In
Brown's 2-volume commentary we find the following pertinent admission:

"... even some who think it was the genuine reading suggest
that in the process of Johannine editing it was introduced into a
passage that originally mentioned only the Paraclete. The question
is of importance because there are some scholars who question the
traditional identification of the Paraclete with the Holy Spirit
(see App. V), and this is the only passage that makes that
identification explicit" (vol. 2, p. 650).

Brown makes it plain that according to some Christian scholars
it is not certain that the Paraclete is the Holy Spirit. They think
that this only passage that teaches so is a later corruption of the
original. Do Muslims need to say any more?

Response:

I don't know how many Muslims want to identify with Shabir Ally's
methods. Muslims like Shabir Ally might not want to say more
but people of any religious persuasion who still care for honesty,
integrity and discussions displaying true scholarship certainly
need to.

Being an honest scholar, Raymond Brown also reports the opinions
of scholars who disagree with his own conclusions. He states them,
and then discusses the reasons why he disagrees. Shabir Ally chooses
not to follow this example of integrity by the justly famous Raymond
Brown, but "forgets" to mention in his article, that Raymond Brown
strongly disagrees with the opinion of this fringe group. Brown
is not in agreement with any of the above mentioned points. He views
the reading "Holy Spirit" as original and states various reasons for
it. Also, Brown identifies the Paraclete with the Holy Spirit giving
many reasons, not just this one passage disputed by some.

It is worth looking carefully at Shabir Ally's formulations.
There is a reason that Shabir Ally is struggling so hard in this
part to formulate his statements in such a way that they are correct
on a literal level but they will nevertheless create in most readers
the intended false impression. The use of Raymond Brown's commentary
by Muslim dawah speakers and writers has a history. Akbarally Meherally's
article on this topic has not only been circulated in print, but also
been on various websites for at least four years.
My own refutation of this article
has been on the web for over two years, and Meherally has taken note
of it at least a year before Shabir Ally placed his article on the web.
Shabir Ally is well aware of our web site (and has even asked via email
for a public debate with me). Furthermore, Ally and Meherally are both
based in Toronto, are both well known Sunni dawah speakers, and there
can be little doubt that Shabir Ally has seen my response to Meherally.
The only minor difference between Meherally and Ally is that the former
took a quote from the above refered to Appendix V, while the latter
took his quotation from the main commentary text on John 14, that
shortly mentioned the issue which was later to be discussed in more
detail in the appendix. However, the false claims are basically the
same, and we refer the readers to our detailed response mentioned
above.

In fact, the extremely careful wording of Ally's passage is itself
giving evidence that he is aware and therefore seeks to avoid the
charge of misquotation which I have levelled on Meherally's abuse of
Brown's distinguished commentary but he still wants to create the
same false impression in the mind of the reader. Unless one reads
very carefully, the impression that will stay with the vast majority
of casual readers (particularly with the Muslims who are already
predisposed to this opinion) is the connection of the famous name of
Raymond Brown with the given quotation and the charge of corruption
of this Bible passage. This can hardly be viewed as anything else than
deliberate deception in intention. No hint is given at all to Brown's
own reasoned conviction that the passage is authentic and his
identification of the Paraclete with the Holy Spirit. This is deception
by omitting relevant details to mislead the reader about the full
picture, which is deception just as much as making false statements.

This is not the first time that Shabir Ally was observed abusing
famous names by associating them with quotations which are not
representing their true opinions. This seems to have become a
repeated method of his writings and public debates, and such a
regularly employed method of deception needs to be exposed,
not excused. The other major occasion was Shabir Ally's debate
with Jay Smith, where he presented quotations from Bruce Metzger's
standard text book on the New Testament text without making clear
that those were not Metzger's own convictions, but again quotation
of others which did not agree with his own conclusions, i.e. statements
which Metzger went on to refute after quoting them were presented as
being from him, who is indeed one of the main authorities of the
text of the New Testament. God willing, at some future time, we will
transcribe the debate and comment on Ally's abuses in more detail.

Let us assemble some quotes of what Raymond Brown really believes
and what Shabir Ally, Akbarally Meherally and other Muslim writers
do not want us to know.

In above mentioned Appendix V, on page 1136 Raymond Brown states,

Thus the basic function of the Paraclete are twofold:
he comes to the disciples and dwells within them,
guiding and teaching them about Jesus; but he is hostile to
the world and puts the world on trial.

At last, on page 1139, after a detailed discussion of opposing
views, including the one quoted by Ally, Dr. Brown gives his own
conclusion and writes:

"It is our contention that John presents the Paraclete as the
Holy Spirit in a special role, namely, as the personal presence
of Jesus in the Christian while Jesus is with the Father."

Dr. Brown's well known commentary comes to the opposite conclusion
than what Shabir Ally wants us to remember from it. Three points are
to retain from this: (1) The identification of the Paraclete with
the Holy Spirit, (2) his identification with Jesus himself, and (3)
his "location" is in every Christian. This makes clear that
he cannot possibly be another human being.

Brown's translation of John 14:15-18 reads

15 "If you love me
and keep my commandments,
16 then at my request
the Father will give you another Paraclete
to be with you forever.
17 He is the Spirit of Truth
whom the world cannot accept
since it neither sees nor recognizes him;
but you recognize him
since he remains with you and is within you.
18 I shall not leave you as orphans:
I am coming back to you.

Jesus promised that the Paraclete will be with his disciples
forever (v.16) [Muhammad never was with them, nor did he stay
forever after he had come], that he is a spirit, which explains
why he cannot be seen by the world (v.17) [Muhammad was not a spirit,
but a human being, and was seen by believers and unbelievers
alike], in fact, the Paraclete's coming is in some way the coming
back of Jesus himself (v.18, but we will not venture here into
discussing the deeper issues of the Trinity), [Muhammad never came
to the Jesus' apostles, nor did he claim identity with Jesus].
In verse 26, we also read, "The Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, whom
the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things, and
will remind you of everything that I have said to you." Muhammad
never claimed to have been sent in the name of Jesus, nor did he
or the Qur'an remind the disciples of all that Jesus had taught
them. Muhammad came much too late, and the Qur'an contains hardly
anything of Jesus' teaching. It concentrates on narrating the
cirumstances of his birth and mentions some of his miracles.

What is Shabir Ally's excuse for failing to mention
Dr. Brown's true opinion?

Shabir Ally:
Brown makes it plain that according to some Christian scholars
it is not certain that the Paraclete is the Holy Spirit. They think
that this only passage that teaches so is a later corruption of the
original. Do Muslims need to say any more?

Yes, they need to, because honesty demands to admit that Brown
and the vast majority of New Testament scholars, even those who
are not believers, think it is the authentic text, and that the
Paraclete refers to the Holy Spirit, because John 14:26 is not
the only passage that makes the identification, the whole flow
of chapters 14-16 demands it, and would still demand it, even if
14:26 were non-existing.

It is correct for us to use "admit" here, since Ally obviously tried
to hide the true conclusions of Raymond Brown and the scholarly
community at large, committing the very same deception of hiding
part of the truth and misrepresenting what the scriptures actually
say, which is the regular but unfounded Muslim accusation against
Christians.

We pray that God may grant Shabir Ally repentance, that he
may either remove or change his deceptive article and henceforth
speak and write truthfully. You, the reader will easily be able to
check for yourself whether Shabir Ally has removed or corrected
his article
at the time you are reading this response.

P.S.: I cannot check for changes on all Muslim sites regularly enough.
Please inform me if Shabir
Ally has indeed corrected himself. I would like to acknowledge this and
update my response accordingly. Nobody should be unjustly accused. Or
if you find any errors which have accidentally slipped into in this
rebuttal, please let me know as well, so that I can correct them.
Thank you very much.